by Callie Rose
Did they want to say it too?
I had a feeling they did, and my soul seemed to strain toward them, desperate to be closer to them. But now wasn’t the time for big declarations of feelings. If we got caught by one of Gavriel’s patrol because we were too busy making out in the woods and declaring our love for each other, I’d never forgive myself.
Soon. I’d tell them all how I felt soon.
“I’m coming too,” Hannah said, and Jayce nodded as she spoke, his blue eyes gleaming in the darkness like stars. “We all are. I’m not going to sit out this fight. Honestly, I’m kind of tired of getting these stories second-hand.”
“All right. Thank you all.”
I was happy for the darkness. It hid the trickle of tears as they slid down my cheeks, although I wasn’t sure how much good it did. My men could feel my emotions well enough that Kai’s thumbs unerringly found the wet tracks slipping down my face.
He brushed my tears away and kissed me again before stepping back, giving me a moment to compose myself.
“If it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay,” Michael said, clearing his throat. He didn’t comment on our little moment, and I was glad as hell for that. “There are people here willing to stand up to him if they have people to stand up with them. I’ll rally them all. If you can send Gavriel running, we’ll try to take him out when he retreats.”
A bright blue rectangle of light shone in the darkness, and Kingston swore. He’d tugged his enchanted cell phone out of his pocket, but he must’ve pressed a button that lit up the screen as he did.
“Stupid phone—here, Michael. I’ve got my private office number set as the only contact. Call us if you ever need to. Once we’re back on earth, I’ll get a new cell and make sure any calls to my office get forwarded to me.”
“Thanks,” Michael said. He took the phone, looking at it with something like awe. “Enchanted, huh?”
“Yep.”
I blinked, watching their exchange with my mouth hanging slightly open. Kingston had bought the enchanted phone before he’d been nabbed by the Custodians, and he’d kept its existence hidden for a year, using it to communicate with people from his old life. He hadn’t even told me about it for a long time, and I knew it was his most valued possession.
“Kingston, are you—”
He cut me off. “It’s important that we have a way to keep track of what’s going on here. We have to try to synchronize our efforts.”
“Looks like the dragons are changing the guard,” Jayce said, glancing up at the sky. “We should move now before they get fresh eyes in the air.”
We scrambled up the hill, back the way we’d come. The short journey to the town seemed to take longer in the deep darkness—or maybe it was the weight of impending doom that made it drag on. Either way, I was glad to see dim firelight on the other side of the tunnel once we finally made it back. Michael led us to a long, low house full of bedrooms.
“This is the boarding house,” he said. “Mostly empty now. Haven’t had many people moving in. But there’s beds enough for you if you want them. I’m gonna get dinner if you want to join me.”
“You guys go ahead,” I said, waving to the men and Hannah. “I want to talk to Kingston for a minute.”
They left, and I took Kingston into one of the empty rooms and shut the door behind us.
“What’s up?” His brow furrowed as he looked down at me.
“What do you mean, what’s up? That phone was your connection to your business. To your old life. To everything.”
He shrugged and leaned against the wall. “Yeah.”
“You know, the one thing keeping the door open for you to go back to your old life?”
He flashed me that cocky half-smile I had come to love so much and swaggered over to where I stood. His eyes drifted over my face and body, and he lifted a hand to brush his fingers over my lips, then bury them in the hair at the nape of my neck.
“Yeah, I know that. But here’s the thing, Piper.” His voice was low and husky, sending shivers down my spine. “Maybe I don’t want to go back. Not as much as I thought. Maybe…” He dropped a kiss at the corner of my mouth. “Maybe I like this life a little bit more.”
His attention kickstarted my succubus power. As much as I wanted to smother it, to see how much of this was real and how much was magic, there was nothing I could do. It twined around us like invisible rope, drawing us irresistibly together.
But when I tasted his mouth, there was more than magic in his kiss. We were more than bonded—and no magic could explain how my heart lifted at his touch, or the depth of emotion in his gaze.
His hands roamed my body as our kiss began to deepen, and I felt him growing hard against me. When I slipped my hands up under his tunic to run my fingertips over the broad planes of his back, he growled into my mouth, the sound possessive and hungry.
I liked it so much that I teased him more, drawing one hand out from under his tunic to squeeze it between us, palming his cock through his pants.
He hummed in approval even as he threaded his hands through my hair, tugging my head back and breaking our kiss.
“Don’t start what you can’t finish, succubus,” he breathed, dropping his head to skim his nose over the soft skin of my neck. When he reached the line of my jaw, he nipped at it gently, making sparks shoot through me.
“I never do,” I shot back, unable to keep the grin out of my voice.
“That might be one of my favorite things about you.”
As he spoke, he released me, but only long enough to turn me in his arms. Then he caught me in a firm hold again, wrapping his arms around my waist and pressing his lips to my hair, right next my ear.
“But we’re guests in this village. Can you keep quiet?”
“Of course I can. Can you?”
His laugh vibrated against my back, and I rolled my ass against him, loving both the feel and the sound of his amusement.
“I can be quieter than you,” he whispered softly.
“I’ll take that bet.”
“Cocky. That’s one of my other favorite things about you.”
This time, I laughed, but the sound changed to a loud groan as he pulled the fabric of my tunic up and shoved his hand down the front of my leggings, finding my clit in less than a second.
He chuckled again as he drew slow, teasing circles around my hard nub. “That wasn’t very quiet.”
“You… cheated.” It was getting harder to keep up with our banter as blood fled my brain, rushing south to where the real party was. “I wasn’t… ready.”
“Oh, I dunno.” His fingers moved lower, dipping into my pussy, which was already soaked for him. “You feel ready to me.”
“Jokes,” I muttered, gasping and grinding against his hand. “The man has jokes.”
Instead of saying anything else, he turned my head and claimed a kiss as his hand moved faster inside my leggings.
Fuck. He’s totally gonna win this bet.
It was the only coherent thought to make it through the haze of lust in my brain, and although part of me wanted to just say fuck it and let the orgasm that was barreling toward me run me over, I had a competitive streak about a mile wide. And that streak couldn’t allow me to just let Kingston win.
Before my legs could literally buckle from the pleasure, I stepped away from his hold, tugging his hand out of my leggings before turning quickly and dropping to my knees. His cock was jutting out, straining hard against the fabric of his pants, and I leaned toward it, opening my mouth and letting hot breath envelop his thick length.
He gave a low grunt and then hissed a breath, pressing his lips together as I pulled his pants lower on his hips, allowing me just enough access to draw out his cock. Using the broad flat of my tongue, I licked a line all the way up the length of his shaft, looking up through my eyelashes to watch him throw his head back, nostrils flaring wide.
When I closed my lips around him, bobbing my head as I took him as deep as I could, he muttered a cho
ked, “Fuck.”
“What was that?” I released his cock from my mouth, turning a teasing smile up at him. “I didn’t quite hear you.”
He looked down at me, desire darkening his green eyes even as affection made them shine.
Then, before I could even track the movement, he reached down and hauled me to my feet. He turned me around again and walked us forward until we were in front of a wooden chair that sat in the corner.
“Hands on the chair, Pipes,” he commanded softly.
My body moved of its own volition, obeying his command before my mouth could come up with a snarky comment. I hinged at the waist, putting my hands on the seat of the chair so I was bent nearly in half, my ass presented to the man behind me like some kind of prize.
When I’d done as he said, he pushed up the fabric of my tunic, bunching it around my waist and tugging my leggings down at the same time. I shivered at the feel of air hitting my bare pussy, and he groaned.
“That’s a point for me,” I murmured, although my taunt came out breathy and full of lust.
“You can have that one. Because I’m about to make you fucking scream.”
With that promise lingering in the air between us, he plunged into me from behind, filling me up in one hard thrust. I clenched my teeth, holding back the scream that almost poured from my lips, but when he grabbed my hips in his large hands and used them to hold me steady as he drove into me, small noises spilled out anyway.
Whimpers.
Moans.
Nonsensical words that begged him to go harder, faster, to never stop.
“God, Piper,” he muttered. “How could I ever want to leave you? You’re it for me. I’m fucking done for.”
I was rapidly losing my battle to stay quiet, but his words were so soft it was almost like he hadn’t meant to speak them aloud. Like he hadn’t meant to let me see that deep into his heart, his soul.
A loud, keening cry fell from my lips as his words sent an electric charge through my body, an energy that seemed to bounce between my heart and my clit and back again, making them both ache in the sweetest way.
He wrapped an arm around my waist and hauled me up to stand, bending his knees slightly and almost holding me in his lap as he drove into me over and over. One large hand moved down to play with my clit again as I let my head fall back against his shoulder, and the other came up to grasp my chin, forcing my back to arch even more.
His cock was hitting a spot inside me that was making my world narrow to a pinprick, pleasure overwhelming my senses. The pads of his fingers teased me roughly, and my ass jiggled with every hard slap of his hips.
It was too fucking much.
Whatever bet we’d had, whatever pride I had, it all went out the window as I came hard on his cock and his hand, opening my mouth to scream my pleasure to the fucking rafters.
Kingston’s mouth closed over mine, swallowing up the sound in a bruising kiss as he slammed into me one more time. His body shuddered against mine as his cock pulsed inside me, and his fingers didn’t stop moving on my clit until my entire body went limp against him.
He finally drew away from our kiss, pressing his lips to the line of my jaw as we both breathed hard. Power infused me, but my legs were wobbly from pleasure, and I was pretty sure that Kingston’s kiss had only muffled my loud scream, not blocked it out entirely.
“Okay, okay,” I panted, squeezing my inner walls around him—as if that could be considered any sort of punishment. “You win.”
His chuckle was warm and deep, and he kissed me one more time before drawing back. I craned my neck to look into his eyes, and what I saw there made my heart skip a beat.
“Yeah,” he murmured, pulling me a little closer into the curve of his body, as if he couldn’t stand having any space between us. “I win.”
Chapter Seventeen
I barely had time to remember who and where I was the next morning before Michael pulled us all out into the town square. A crowd of people were waiting for us by the well, all grim-faced and silent. Keeping my head high and my guys close, I approached them. Michael nodded from us to the crowd.
“Piper and the rest of you, these people here are willing to stand up to Gavriel directly. Most of them have friends and family outside the village. They think those people will follow us into battle too.”
“I know my brothers will,” a demon at the front growled. His skin was a deep purple color, and his horns curved tightly around his head. “We’ve lost too many to Gavriel.”
I looked over their faces, a tiny bubble of hope rising in my chest. There weren’t many of them, but they knew people, who knew people, and so on. They might actually be able to pull something together. Maybe not enough to stop Gavriel themselves, but if we could get the stupid fucking Custodians to listen for once, we might all have a shot at stopping Gavriel’s army.
“I won’t stop here neither,” Michael told us. I wasn’t sure if it was meeting us or having his house destroyed, or just one too many days of living in fear, but something seemed to have lit a fire under his ass. I was glad for it. “I’ll be recruiting an army while you’re up there doing whatever you feel you need to. We’ll be in touch.”
He patted his pocket where I assumed he was keeping Kingston’s phone.
“There’s a woman you should get in touch with,” I said, chewing on my lip. It seemed like a long shot, since I wasn’t familiar with the geography of the underworld, but maybe Michael knew it better. Quickly, I described the route we’d taken that had led us to Vee’s hidden house.
To my surprise, Michael seemed to know the area I was talking about, and he nodded along more decisively as I described the landscape.
“She lives on the other side of the mountains,” I finished. “She’s up the slope a little way from the edge of the red meadow. You know the forest between the bogs?”
He nodded. “Yup. I know it. Haven’t been that way in years.”
“The forest comes to a point, like an arrow. Her place is directly across from the tip of that arrow. Her name is—well, she called herself Vee. She didn’t trust us with her real name. Anyway, she’s smart and resourceful and hates Gavriel as much as you do.”
And she’s a lonely-ass loner just like you.
I kept that part to myself though. It seemed like a terrible time to be playing matchmaker. “I think she could help.”
“Vee, huh?” There was a gleam in his eye and his heavy aura lifted slightly. “Interesting. Yeah, I’ll get in touch.”
I looked around at the gathered crowd again, feeling like I should say something. They were watching me expectantly, as if waiting for me to give them some kind of pep talk. It wouldn’t have been the first time I’d convinced people to go into battle. I could still hear the screams of the young, inexperienced students from my first year at FU when I’d used my power to force them into battle against a flock of rogue sprites. The sickening thwack of a brick against some kid’s head would haunt me forever.
I cleared my throat. Persuasion rose in the back of my throat, eager to be used, but I shoved it back down. I wouldn’t make the same mistake again; I’d done it too often already. I still had a heart somewhere, didn’t I? I should speak from it.
“I know that Gavriel isn’t as powerful as he’s made everybody believe,” I said slowly. “We’ve bested him a couple times. But we’ve never hurt him badly or kept him down for long. And...” I stepped closer to Xero and slid my hand into his. I looked up at him, my gaze trailing the fresh scars on his body and face. “Not without casualties. We watched our fellow student die at his hand. Xero was tortured nearly to the point of death. Gavriel is deadly and vicious.”
I looked back at the crowd. Some looked more stubborn than ever. Others were shifting uneasily, like they were about to bolt.
I’m not doing this right, damn it. I was supposed to be hyping them up.
“But he isn’t a god.” Straightening my spine, I raised my voice. “Not even close. He’s nothing but a power-hungry demon
who’s been alive too damn long. You can see it. He’s a walking skeleton, held together with magic and a lust for power. He isn’t anything great, and I think deep down, he knows it. If Gavriel was really all that special, he wouldn’t be shoving his dick into every plane of existence just to prove that he has one. It’s time to cut it off.”
A low chuckle rippled through the crowd, then someone started to chant. “Cut it off. Cut it off.” Then more voices joined that one, and soon the whole crowd—and many of the bystanders—were shouting “Cut it off” at the top of their lungs, whipping themselves up into a frothy fury.
I was stunned. I didn’t think I could do that without magic.
Maybe we’d need to work on a better battle cry eventually, but if this worked, I wasn’t going to fight it.
I beamed at Kai, who grinned back at me. He’d never been comfortable with my excessive use of persuasive magic. I saw a glimmer of pride in his eyes, and I found that pride reflected in myself. For myself. It was a new feeling.
Michael came closer to us to be heard over the chanting. “Nice speech,” he drawled. “You inspired me, anyway. Gave me a whole new goal to focus on.”
His expression grew a little savage, and I grinned. “Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”
The guys and Hannah gathered closer around me, and we all linked ourselves together, grasping the forearms of the people next to us. We’d use a portal to get back to earth—but once we got back, we’d have to be careful as hell, since we were all marked for death.
“Where are we going?” Jayce asked.
“Seattle,” I said. “Dru’s territory. Safest place to port in this condition.”
“All I know about Seattle is the Space Needle.” Kai grimaced.
“That should be good enough,” I said, hoping it was true. “Just focus on that as hard as you can. Everyone who does know Seattle, give it all you’ve got. And hold on to each other tight.”
They did as I said, and I counted to three. We somehow managed to hold on to one another even with reality dissolving around us, though the attempt kind of threw off our axis.